Followup Questions on Accountability and the Diocesan Hermit

[[Dear Sister O'Neal, thank you for answering my question on diocesan v universal church representation by hermits. If someone argues that they are not subject to a local bishop in the way canon 603 hermits are because they are not diocesan but instead are hermits in the whole Church then how is it they are responsible to the Church for their vocation? Is their pastor the one they are answerable to? Is Joyful Hermit insinuating she is responsible in a less local way  to someone other than her local bishop? It just seems to me that if she explains that she can move from place to place without requiring acceptance by the local bishop  she must be "suggesting" she is answerable in a different way --- or maybe not at all. How would a bishop feel about having some hermits who were accountable to him and others who are not accountable at all? I can't imagine that sitting well with most bishops, not mine anyway! Lastly, I was wondering about your own statement about your vocation. You say you live your vocation with God in the silence of solitude for the sake of others. Do you mean merely that you pray for others? Are you accountable to others besides your bishop and delegate?]]

 You are most welcome. You have also put your finger on the really important issue of accountability. The Church does not ordain or profess and/or consecrate anyone in an ecclesial vocation (priesthood, religious or monastic life, canonical eremitical life, consecrated virginity) without assuring adequate structures or relationships for accountability. In a vocation with the history and heritage of stereotypes common to eremitical life as well as its rarity (it is not the usual way most people come to human wholeness!), the need to assure supervision and accountability becomes particularly important. In any case whether one belongs to a religious congregation, is a consecrated hermit or a consecrated virgin, one is responsible to people on the local level more immediately than to others on less local levels. Again, we use the principle of "subsidiarity" to be sure accountability is exercised at a level which is most helpful to the consecrated person and the congregation or local church in which the person ministers and lives her life.

Recently I wrote that legitimate superiors exercise what is known as the ministry of authority. I also wrote it is a ministry of love and service. For this to be true, authority must be exercised at a level closest to the one being ministered to. Accountability must be similarly exercised or the entire dynamic of loving service will be short-circuited or made empty. By the way, though a pastor is closest to a consecrated hermit in terms of church attendance, reception of sacraments, and pastoral care, etc, pastors of parishes are not legitimate superiors in the sense required by law. They may witness (but not receive) private vows; in so doing they do not become responsible for an eremitical vocation in the ways a bishop does. Neither would a hermit's Spiritual Director. The ministry of authority requires both persons in the relationship grant and accept the rights and obligations which are part of the exercise of legitimate authority. This means they must also be able to do so and this requires commissioning by a greater legitimate authority.  Bishops acquire their authority with regard to consecrated hermits from Canon 603 and from Rome which appoints them bishops in the first place. Parish pastors or parochial administrators have not been given the authority to act in this way with regard to a consecrated hermit --- though, of course, a bishop could delegate a hermit's pastor to take on such a responsibility and authority as he delegates this to any delegate/Director.

Regarding subsidiarity with regard to religious institutes, while these have General superiors (Presidents, etc) there are also a network of superiors exercising authority at more and more local levels (provincials, priors and prioresses, regional superiors,  novice or juniorate directors, etc., to the level of house superiors). Solitary consecrated hermits (c 603 hermits) don't have such a network of those in authority because they do not belong to institutes of consecrated life. Instead, they make their vows in the hands of the local bishop who is thus their legitimate superior and he assigns or accepts the hermit's choice for a delegate or Director who serves as a kind of superior for the hermit by exercising the ministry of authority on behalf of the bishop/diocese for the benefit of the hermit's life and vocation. However, no one who is professed and consecrated is without the relationships required for the exercise of their obligation to accountability, and this at the lowest (i.e., the most local)  possible level of responsibility according to the principle of subsidiarity.

To suggest one is not accountable in this way while claiming the title "consecrated hermit" or to affirm that one can move from place to place because they are responsible to the "universal church" is simply to indicate one does not know (or perhaps care) how such things actually work in the Roman Catholic Church; it is to express an actual untruth. This is of a piece with saying Canon 603 doesn't mention legitimate superiors when it clearly refers to making one's profession "in the hands of" the Local bishop; profession is always made in the hands of the one serving as legitimate superior. Doing so is derived from an act of fealty once made to Kings, princes, and other Lords. There are many words that Canon 603 doesn't use directly and are nonetheless presupposed by the canon. Because a word is missing does not mean the concept is not present nor part of the Church's larger theology of consecrated life.

How Would a Bishop Feel?

How would bishops feel if they have canonical hermits who are accountable to the bishop and other hermits who come and go without being accountable? I suspect the situation would be problematical (unworkable) and at least frustrating for such bishops. Imagine then that such a person blogged in ways that were disedifying about the eremitical vocation. Imagine they had their own take on private vows and consecration based upon a misinterpretation of  two ambiguously or even mistakenly translated paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Imagine this same lay hermit insisted on remaining anonymous and without specific location in the putative name of "eremitical hiddenness" all while claiming to be a "consecrated religious" or a "consecrated Catholic Hermit" while writing disedifying things about consecrated life or misrepresenting eremitical life and the Church's role in governing such vocations! But of course, the Church does not have a dual track in the way it governs consecrated life. It does not allow for accountability of those in one track and complete unaccountability of those in another. Instead, it recognizes and states clearly that the consecrated state of life is a "stable state of life" lived for the edification of the Church and the glory of God and it provides (and requires) what is necessary to establish and maintain that stability including structures and relationships ensuring responsibility and accountability.

I once thought Canon 603 referred to both lay and consecrated solitary hermits. Over time I came to change my mind on that. Similarly, I tried several ways to make sense of the ambiguity of pars 920-921 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church when it speaks of "without always making vows publicly". In time I checked the original Latin which clarified the canon could not be referring to the possibility of private vows or to lay hermit life as well as consecrated life. I concluded the badly-written English version was trying to point to the only alternative to public vows c 603 allows, namely the use of other sacred bonds. In either case, though, the person's profession is and must be a public one and other sections of the CCC (cf par 944) make that absolutely clear. One of my sincerest hopes is that when the CCC is revised they will clarify the matter and add a paragraph on the importance of the lay hermit, the non-canonical hermit who embraces eremitical life within the baptized state without the benefit of additional canons or institutional accountability. As it stands the CCC is particularly problematical because of those who would like to exploit its misleading ambiguities and portray themselves as consecrated hermits without being admitted by public profession to the graces, rights, or obligations of that vocation.

Questions about Joyful Hermit Specifically:

You ask several questions about Joyful Hermit specifically.  While I will answer these generally with regard to Joyful, I believe they fit anyone claiming/pretending --- for whatever reason --- to being a Consecrated Religious or hermit living eremitical life in the name of the Church. I think the bottom line is that beyond her baptism Joyful (and others) has not been initiated into any canonical (public, legal) relationships within the Church or with her leadership or hierarchy, no canonical standing that would allow her to claim to be obligated or accountable in the way someone with an ecclesial vocation as a "consecrated hermit" would necessarily be obligated and accountable. Another way of saying this is to note that Joyful and persons like her have not been initiated into the stable state of life associated with profession and/or consecration.

What you cited earlier did sound to me like an attempt by Joyful to avoid the entire issue of ecclesial accountability with vague references to the Universal Church and mistaken interpretations of what it means to be a diocesan hermit. That said, Joyful remains a laywoman who has embraced eremitical life without the benefit of canonical standing or consecration beyond her baptism. This does not detract from the fact that her own vocation is important. In fact, it accents its importance. Her private vows are of real value, both personally and in the Church. As a result of her baptism, she has the very significant freedom of a lay person to live eremitical life as she deems necessary in response to God's call. She is free to move about as a hermit without direct accountability to anyone except God and her own conscience precisely because she is a lay hermit and not one in the consecrated state of life. What is interesting to me is that she lives precisely this kind of freedom even as she insists she is a "consecrated Catholic Hermit".

It is important (and quite challenging) that people like Joyful accept their vocations, that they respond to God's call in the lay state and find ways to live eremitical life with authenticity. The history of eremitical life has been carried forward in the Western Church by such people -- not least the Desert Fathers and Mothers or the anchorites prevalent in the Middle Ages. As I have noted a number of times here the majority of hermits have been and will always be lay hermits --- those who embrace a call to eremitical life in their baptized state without benefit or need of canonical profession or consecration. But one does not do this by refusing to accept the simple fact that a private commitment by a lay person means one remains a person in the lay state. In this matter, one cannot have one's cake and eat it too. Joyful (or anyone in a similar situation) cannot seek the benefit of calling herself and being regarded as a "consecrated Catholic Hermit" while insisting on the unique freedom which is pertinent to lay (or non canonical) eremitical life. She (nor any other person acting similarly) cannot honestly claim an ecclesial vocation without concrete accountability to legitimate superiors or the other elements which constitute a stable consecrated state of life in the Roman Catholic Church.

Commissioned to Live Eremitical Life in the Name of the Church:

I am reminded that the Church has sent me and other canonical hermits into our hermitages to live the silence of solitude in communion with God for the sake of others; that sending obligates me to accountability not only to eremitical life generally, but to solitary eremitical life as the Church has codified this in c 603. Because Joyful is privately vowed, her own missioning is as a lay person and her correlative accountability thus takes a very different form than someone in the consecrated state; again, as a result she is entirely free to live her lay vocation in whatever way she chooses without direct accountability to the Church for the form of life she chooses for herself --- but also without the title appropriate to those living consecrated (canonical) vocations. Similarly one cannot speak and write about canon 603 as a kind of distortion of eremitical life, as Joyful has certainly done from time to time throughout the years, and at the same time ask folks to treat her as though she has the kind of standing in law canon 603 establishes.

This is not a matter of legalism as Joyful tends to claim; it is simply a recognition that the rights attending consecrated life are matched by obligations a person is called by God to embrace through the mediation of God's Church. The Church's own approach to consecrated eremitical life is entirely consistent. Those who live eremitical life in the name of the Church are commissioned to live an explicit accountability to God's People in the hands of legitimate superiors. They accept this accountability as a unique form of responsible eremitical freedom. Not everyone is called or even desires to be called in this way. For those who are not (or who do not desire to be)  called in this way, the route of lay eremitical life is available to them, a route which has been of inestimable value and significance to eremitical life in the Church. But again, one cannot have one's cake and eat it too. To believe otherwise is childish and unthinking; moreover, it denigrates or at least disregards the kind of commitments and sacrifices made by those who have freely embraced the consecrated state of life and the direct accountability it involves.

To Whom Else am I Responsible?

Your last question is good. Thank you for asking this. While I do regularly pray for others I do not understand the heart of my accountability to others as that. Instead I understand that first of all I am called to witness to the Gospel that says God completes us, God alone is sufficient for us, God loves and delights in us in spite of our sinfulness or isolation. In today's world (and this is especially clear where I live) we see elderly people and others who are isolated from their churches, from families, through bereavement from their spouses, and so forth. We see people who are isolated by disability and the rhythm of whose lives are marked by illness and even impending death. I believe my life is meant to speak to these people in particular. Yes, of course I pray for them, but even more I hope to witness to them that the way to wholeness, holiness, and completeness is still open to them in God embraced in solitude. I hope that my life says that eremitical solitude is not the same as isolation and that while my life is marked by several things which isolate, this isolation can be redeemed by God and transfigured into a solitude which is filled with life, love, meaning, and hope.

I believe I am called by God through the mediation of God's Church to witness in this way to these and similar people. In a very real way I am responsible to them --- not in the sense I am accountable to the Church through legitimate superiors, but no less really nonetheless. I don't believe the Church professes and consecrates anyone to eremitical solitude simply to make of them some sort of "prayer warrior" (as important as prayer is!!), much less to institutionalize selfishness and individualism. Canonical Hermits are called, like any other Religious is called, to witness to the God who comes to us in the unexpected and unacceptable place, who makes of the deserts of our lives fields which flourish with new life and growth, who allows the dry and barren places to run with living water and the sweetness of milk and wild honey, who transforms  screams of suffering and the anguish of muteness into Magnificats of praise and articulate proclamations of the Good News.

The role of my bishop and delegate is to be sure I live, and have secured (or am able to secure) the necessary means to live the commission to this vocation which the Church has entrusted to me. (This is similarly true for any diocesan hermit with regard to their bishops and delegates.) The personal formation work I do with my Director is meant to be sure I live fully the truth of myself with God. I, as is true of any diocesan hermit, am morally, and legally accountable to the Church in a direct and concrete way for doing whatever it takes within the context of Canon 603 and the eremitical tradition, to become God's own prayer in our world and to witness to the completion that is possible for each one of us with and in God, no matter the circumstances of our lives. I, as again is true for any diocesan hermit, am directly and concretely accountable to the Church Universal to witness to the adequacy and beauty of Canon 603; this canon spells out in normative fashion (thus the term "canon") what a solitary hermit is all about. I, like any diocesan hermit am accountable to my parish and diocese (the local Church) to bring what gifts I can to them in order to witness to the life that God offers and invites us each to. I am accountable to them to be the hermit I am called to be --- not as an isolated individualist, but as someone who recognizes that eremitical solitude is a unique form of community which itself can help build community in powerful ways. In these and any number of complementary ways I am accountable to the Church on both universal and local levels. Again, this is true for anyone claiming a vocation to consecrated life in the Church. 

For What it's Worth: General News and Plans for the Summer

Well, things around Stillsong are coming along! I hadn't mentioned, I don't think, (or did I?) that they are renovating the complex. This last week they put double-paned windows and doors in my place and they are wonderful!! I finally got my bed put back together (it sits in front of the bedroom window so needed to be taken apart to allow access) and was able to sleep in my own bed last night. AHHH!! There's still a lot to get taken care of before I can live comfortably in my own hermitage (I am getting rid of boxes and boxes of books and other things as well!), but it is looking like it will happen. My prayer mat and zafu is still in another apartment where I have been staying as needed because of sound triggering seizures. So are my computer and books for the work I have been doing. I am loving this second apartment because it is located in the midst of redwoods next to a creek and is generally quieter and more secluded. When the work is completed in the entire complex I could move here -- especially if it eases some of the medical difficulties due to sound. We'll see!

Last Wednesday we finished the second series I have done for Bible Study at my parish. We started with Jesus' parables for the first 8 week series and this one was the Sermon on the Mount --- though we focused mainly on the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer. We were actually to finish last week, but when I announced it was our last meeting there was a bit of a reaction and one of the participants said, "Why?" So we did one more session in order to clarify, expand on, and bring things to some closure before stopping for the Summer. Starting the Thursday after Labor Day the group wants to begin a semester long series. I'm game. Right now I am planning to do Galatians though some suggestions for something else may still come in. So far the series have built on one another in terms of content. Doing Galatians would be a good introduction to the situation in the Church vis-a-vis Judaism and to Paul's theologies of freedom and the problem of Gospel vs Law. Because we introduced the idea of virtue ethics with the Beatitudes it might be possible to continue Paul's own virtue ethics in order to deepen an approach to moral theology in these terms. We have very fine preaching at our parish but the chance to really go deeper into the texts and to see the depth of the theology involved is exciting.

We may need to move to a larger space for the morning group --- though I have really liked and hope to keep the seminar style around a large conference table. The evening session will likely continue in the same place but the morning group has grown and that is likely to continue over time; moving would allow more space and access to some of the things our new parish center makes possible (use of power point, etc). One of the things I have especially loved watch developing is a sense of community with regard to this specific group. Another is the sense that gathering around Scripture allows for real growth in discipleship and personal formation --- always important in a world where the Gospel is so very countercultural, but not always easy to nurture or provide for. Yet people are hungry for both Scripture and for the theology that is rooted in it.

So this Summer I am going to prepare two Bible series. As noted above, the first, which would take us through Thanksgiving, will be Galatians and I am not sure yet what the second will be. I have several ideas including the Passion Narratives (a comparison of a couple of them maybe, or a comparison of the theology of the Cross of Mark vs that of Paul), Women in the New Testament --- perhaps with regard to their role in establishing the early Church, a second Pauline epistle (maybe 1 Thessalonians or 2 Corinthians) --- one of the shorter ones anyway. There are lots of possibilities. I am not ready to branch out into the Old Testament yet (in no way am I an OT scholar) though Galatians will need significant OT background and preparation I think. It sounds like a lot of work, but teaching these last two series has been incredibly life-giving to me and paradoxically, a strong confirmation of my eremitical vocation!

I have already written about this a few weeks ago, but it continues to be true. Eremitical life demands that I go into the Scriptures and the related theology in order to live from these, but it also frees me to do this in ways I had not expected; at the same time the Scriptures (of course!!) throw me back into the silence of solitude and beg that I allow Christ to teach, nourish, and form me as a hermit in ever more profound ways. Simultaneously (and paradoxically), fostering community through Scripture study is clearly a function of my eremitical life as well. It is gratifying to discover that eremitical solitude can be the source of both growth in community and personal formation for some in a parish community. So far, what I have shared, both Scripturally and theologically are those things which have most clearly been a source of inspiration and sense-making (meaning and hope!) for me throughout my life. I am not surprised to find these things are affecting others in some of the same ways.

At the end of Wednesday's session the group gave me a card with a stylized picture of the burning bush on the front of it. One of the members read a poem which said something of what the studies had meant to them: [[Days pass, and the years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles. Fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, “How filled with awe is this place . . . by Rachel Naomi Remen]] It was a wonderful celebration of the grace of God as it came to each of us through both the parables and the Sermon on the Mount --- but I think that was especially true as we explored some of the depths of the Lord's Prayer, the Kingdom present here amongst us, and our own identities as adopted Daughters and Sons in and through Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God.

My other plans for the Summer include more writing, namely on Canon 603, the charism of the vocation, and the way this defines how dioceses approach candidates for profession and consecration. As I noted a few months ago, Rome is concerned with the incidence of fraudulent hermits so it becomes important to make this vocation better known and also better understood, especially by chanceries and pastors. I remain convinced that a failure to understand the charism of the vocation causes chanceries to profess those who will fail to live the vocation well or, alternately, to refuse to profess anyone at all! The problem of mistaking lone individuals for solitary hermits remains significant at all levels; so does mistaking "the silence of solitude" for "silence and solitude". Unless these points are clarified I believe dioceses will continue to have problems discerning good candidates. At the same time the question of formation is no less pressing now than when I first began to think about it myself so I think it is time to get back to that in order (I would sincerely hope) to assist dioceses and candidates for eremitical profession under c 603 as I can.

There are still some decisions to be made about my left wrist. There will likely be some more cortisone injections (only 1 or 2) because of problems with the tendons of my thumb due to a secondary injury; after that we will need to see if surgery to shorten the ulna is necessary because of pressure on and tearing of the triangular ligament joining ulna and radius due to the way the bones healed. I would like to play violin again (understatement of the century!) --- it has always been important to my prayer life as well as to my intellectual and psychological well-being. I miss it --- though I have certainly kept busy enough otherwise and will continue to do so! For the most part those are my plans for the Summer. I will probably not go away on retreat this Summer but I may use this second apartment for that while construction goes on on my own building. It is quiet enough and feels like a guest room at a monastery or retreat house. Meanwhile, an added benefit is that my own director is available to me should I make retreat here.

I wish readers a good and Holy Summer! I hope you have plans for a fruitful time of prayer, maybe for some silence and solitude, and for family and community time as well as for work and recreation! If you travel be safe!!!

Diocesan Hermits are Hermits of and for the Universal Church

[[Dear Sister O'Neal, I watched a video where Joyful Hermit said those professed "under canon 603 belong to dioceses and those who are privately professed belong per se to the universal Church". Is that right? If I got her right she also says that privately professed hermits have always been the way the Church consecrated hermits. I think she meant that canon 603 is a new way of doing this with some extra requirements that she seems to think represents a kind of legalism. Is this correct?]]

Well, I suppose it depends on what else Joyful has said in this specific regard, but generally speaking, with the quote you have provided it sounds as though Joyful Hermit is saying non-canonical hermits are recognized as hermits by and for the universal Church, but canon 603 hermits are recognized only within a diocese. If so, she is incorrect. Canon 603 hermits are diocesan in the sense that they are bound in authority at the diocesan level. They are hermits of a specific diocese (a local Church) which, in the hands of the local ordinary, professes and consecrates them on behalf of the Universal Church. Their vocations are ecclesial in a Catholic or universal sense, but they must be responsible at the diocesan level or their vocations could not be effectively governed nor could the hermits be genuinely responsible or accountable to the whole Church. The Roman Catholic Church relies on the principle of subsidiarity. Governance in this case proceeds from the lowest or most local level upward precisely to facilitate genuine governance and accountability.

Thus, as a "hermit of the Diocese of Oakland" (Bishop's Decree of Approval. . .) I would need to have another bishop accept responsibility for my vocation if I were to decide to move to another diocese (and I would need my current bishop to verify I am a hermit is good standing in order to begin such a move and remain a diocesan hermit), but the fact that I can move from one diocese to another, marks my vocation as valid in and for the universal Church. Similarly, since canon 603 is the universal norm/canon for solitary eremitical life in the entire Church, and since diocesan hermits are governed by and responsible for the vocation defined in this universal norm, we can affirm their vocations are universal vocations -- callings in and for the universal Church. Again, this vocation is supervised and "created" (discerned, professed, consecrated, and governed) at the diocesan level (at the level of the local Church) but this is the way governance generally takes place in and on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church.

Privately vowed hermits (we don't use the term professed here because that implies a public rite involving a change in state of life!) have been the usual way of living eremitical life in the Roman Catholic Church throughout the centuries but this was not recognized as "consecrated life" or defined as part of the "consecrated state of life". In fact, the Church never understood eremitical life as part of the consecrated life unless hermits were members of religious congregations (Camaldolese, Carthusian, Carmelite, etc). Some anchorites came under the auspices of local Bishops, especially during medieval times. Even so, I don't believe these anchorites were considered to be consecrated though, rightly, they were highly regarded by their communities (villages). In @ 1963 in an intervention at Vatican II, Bishop Remi de Roo sought to get eremitical life included in Canon Law as a "state of perfection" -- what today we call "a consecrated state" of life. Only a long 20 years later when the Revised Code of Canon Law was published in October 1983 and included c 603, was eremitical life included in universal Law at all. If, as Joyful Hermit claims, hermits were always consecrated using private vows and always considered to exist in the "consecrated state" of life,  Bishop Remi De Roo would not have needed, much less ventured, such an intervention in the language ("state of perfection") he did. Neither would the dozen or so hermits he came to oversee as "Bishop Protector" have been understood to have relinquished their consecrated state of life in order to become hermits after leaving their monasteries.

As I have noted in the past, Canon 603 is now the universal norm in the Roman Catholic Church for establishing a solitary hermit in the consecrated state of life. There are no other norms, laws, "institutes," rules, statutes, etc for establishing a solitary hermit in law, and thus, as a consecrated hermit unless one is a member of a canonical congregation dedicated to eremitical life or at least allowing for it in their proper law. The Roman Catholic Church simply had not honored the solitary eremitical life in this way for almost 1600 years. (Eastern Catholic Churches have always honored it.) The Desert fathers and Mothers were lay hermits, not consecrated hermits; their prophetic lives were significant and they remain a model for all hermits, both non-canonical (lay, non-consecrated) or canonical (consecrated). About one thousand years later, when Bishops took anchorites under their auspices it was done to make sure these individuals were acting in an edifying manner and living genuinely eremitical lives. (Too often individuals tried to validate all kinds of insanity and wackiness with the name "hermit". The Church needed to attempt some governance over such cases. Additionally, it is possible the Church regarded such vocations with some trepidation insofar as they represented truly prophetic vocations -- as had the Desert Fathers and Mothers.)

In my experience, canon 603 was formulated and promulgated for the significantly positive reasons Bishop de Roo put forth at Vatican II (cf The Heart of the Matter: Reasons for including Eremitical Life as a "State of Perfection"); moreover, it is carefully implemented by most dioceses for these reasons as well as to limit the kinds of wackiness and nutcases often associated with eremitical "vocations". Law in c 603 serves to allow sound vocations which are well-supervised and edifying to the universal Church. In particular, it does not allow the kind of individualism represented by autocephalic (or acephalous!!) vocations like that of the person you cite.

The ability to move from place to place without supervision or genuine accountability is not a sign of serving the whole Church; instead it does not tend to serve either the eremitical vocation or the Church well. St Benedict saw this clearly when he referred critically to monks who moved from monastery to monastery without accountability as "gyrovagues" (cf the introduction to his Rule).  The Church, in requiring that one entering the consecrated life be professed in a recognized and "stable state of life", is clear that all ecclesial vocations must be adequately discerned, mediated, and supervised. They are simply too precious, too valuable, and too responsible to allow them to languish in a headless, unstable and individualistic context, or to let them become skewed due to an individual's unguided and eccentric readings of Church documents and theology.

We don't tolerate folks identifying themselves as Catholic Religious (or as consecrated) who (on a relative whim) may don a religious habit (or not), and make some sort of private commitment without vetting or real preparation -- even if they do so in the presence of the Tabernacle or a parish priest. We call these folks "lay persons" because of the dignity of their baptism and "lay hermits" to honor any genuine dedication to eremitical life lived in the lay (baptismal) state without benefit of canonical profession or consecration. (It should be underscored that some lay hermits live genuine, even exemplary, vocations with preparation and serious discernment of course --- but many, because of ignorance, eccentricity, or simple inability do not.) If, however, lay hermits insist on calling themselves "Catholic religious" or "consecrated hermits",  the Church will note they are  ignorant of the Catholic theology of consecrated life, possibly deluded, or even outright frauds --- and rightly so.

The Church has been entrusted with vocations to the consecrated state. She does not (and cannot) hand authority for these over to the individual. These vocations "belong" to the Church herself; they are ecclesial vocations. Such vocations are vetted (discerned and evaluated in an ongoing way), mediated, and governed by the Church herself in the hands of legitimate authorities precisely because they are gifts of the Holy Spirit which are the responsibility of and fruitful for the entire Church. Unfortunately, as you can tell from the questions I get re: these, videos and blogs like those you and others have sometimes cited are a good example of the negative reasons the Church requires ecclesiastical discernment, profession, and supervision for something as potentially individualistic and disedifying as an eremitical vocation.

Thomas called Didymus: What's His Doubt About?

Today's Gospel focuses on the appearances of Jesus to the disciples, and one of the lessons one should draw from these stories is that we are indeed dealing with bodily resurrection, but therefore, with a kind of bodiliness which transcends the corporeality we know here and now. It is very clear that Jesus' presence among his disciples is not simply a spiritual one, in other words, and that part of Christian hope is the hope that we as embodied persons will come to perfection beyond the limits of death. It is not just our souls which are meant to be part of the new heaven and earth, but our whole selves, body and soul.

The scenario with Thomas continues this theme, but is contextualized in a way which leads homilists to focus on the whole dynamic of faith with seeing, and faith despite not having seen. It also makes doubt the same as unbelief and plays these off against faith, as though faith cannot also be served by doubt. But doubt and unbelief are decidedly NOT the same things. We rarely see Thomas as the one whose doubt (or whose demands!) SERVES true faith, and yet, that is what today's Gospel is about. Meanwhile, Thomas also tends to get a bad rap as the one who was separated from the community and doubted what he had not seen with his own eyes. The corollary here is that Thomas will not simply listen to his brother and sister disciples and believe that the Lord has appeared to or visited them. But I think there is something far more significant going on in Thomas' proclamation that unless he sees the wounds inflicted on Jesus in the crucifixion, and even puts his fingers in the very nail holes, he will not believe.

What Thomas, I think, wants to make very clear is that we Christians believe in a crucified Christ, and that the resurrection was God's act of validation of Jesus as scandalously and ignominiously Crucified. I think Thomas knows on some level anyway, that insofar as the resurrection really occured, it does not nullify what was achieved on the cross. Instead it renders permanently valid what was revealed (made manifest and made real) there. In other words, Thomas knows if the resurrection is really God's validation of Jesus' life and establishes him as God's Christ, the Lord he will meet is the one permanently established and marked as the crucified One. The crucifixion was not some great misunderstanding which could be wiped away by resurrection. Instead it was an integral part of the revelation of the nature of truly human and truly divine existence. Whether it is the Divine life, authentic human existence, or sinful human life --- all are marked and revealed in one way or another by the signs of Jesus' cross. For instance, ours is a God who has journeyed to the very darkest, godless places or realms human sin produces, and has become Lord of even those places. He does not disdain them even now but is marked by them and will journey with us there --- whether we are open to him doing so or not --- because Jesus has implicated God there and marked him with the wounds of an exhaustive kenosis.

Another piece of this is that Jesus is, as Paul tells us, the end of the Law and it was Law that crucified him. The nail holes and wounds in Jesus' side and head -- indeed every laceration which marked him -- are a sign of legal execution -- both in terms of Jewish and Roman law. We cannot forget this, and Thomas' insistence that he really be dealing with the Crucified One reminds us vividly of this fact as well. The Jewish and Roman leaders did not crucify Jesus because they misunderstood him, but because they understood all-too-clearly both Jesus and the immense power he wielded in his weakness and poverty. They understood that he could turn the values of this world, its notions of power, authority, etc, on their heads. They knew that he could foment profound revolution (religious and otherwise) wherever he had followers. They chose to crucify him not only to put an end to his life, but to demonstrate he was a fraud who could not possibly have come from God; they chose to crucify him to terrify those who might follow him into all the places discipleship might really lead them --- especially those places of human power and influence associated with religion and politics. The marks of the cross are a judgment (krisis) on this whole reality.

There are many gods and even manifestations of the real God available to us today, and so there were to Thomas and his brethren in those first days and weeks following the crucifixion of Jesus. When Thomas made his declaration about what he would and would not believe, none of these were crucified Gods or would be worthy of being believed in if they were associated with such shame and godlessness. Thomas knew how very easy it would be for his brother and sister disciples to latch onto one of these, or even to fall back on entirely traditional notions in reaction to the terribly devastating disappointment of Jesus' crucifixion. He knew, I think, how easy it might be to call the crucifixion and all it symbolized a terrible misunderstanding which God simply reversed or wiped away with the resurrection -- a distasteful chapter on which God has simply turned the page. Thomas knew that false prophets showed up all the time. He knew that a God who is distant and all-powerful is much easier to believe in (and follow) than one who walks with us even in our sinfulness or who empties himself to become subject to the powers of sin and death, especially in the awful scandal and ignominy of the cross --- and who expects us to do essentially the same.

In other words, Thomas' doubt may have had less to do with the FACT of a resurrection, than it had to do with his concern that the disciples, in their desperation, guilt, and the immense social pressure they faced, had truly met and clung to the real Lord, the crucified One. In this way their own discipleship will come to be marked by the signs of the cross as they preach, suffer, and serve in the name (and so, in the paradoxical power) of THIS Lord and no other. Only he could inspire them; only he could sustain them; only he could accompany them wherever true discipleship led them.

Paul said, "I want to know Christ crucified and only Christ crucified" because only this Christ had transformed sinful, godless reality with his presence, only this Christ had redeemed even the realms of sin and death by remaining open to God even within these realities. Only this Christ would journey with us to the unexpected and unacceptable places, and in fact, only he would meet us there with the promise and presence of a God who would bring life out of them. Thomas, I believe, knew precisely what Paul would soon proclaim himself, and it is this, I think, which stands behind his insistence on seeing the wounds and put his fingers in the very nail holes. He wanted to be sure his brethren were putting their faith in the crucified One, the one who turned everything upside down and relativized every other picture of God we might believe in. He became the great doubter because of this, but I suspect instead, he was the most astute theologian among the original Apostles. He, like Paul, wanted to know Christ Crucified and ONLY Christ Crucified.

We should not trivialize Thomas' witness by transforming him into a run of the mill empiricist and doubter (though doubting is an important piece of growth in faith)!! Instead we should imitate his insistence: we are called upon to be followers of the Crucified God, and no other. Every version of God we meet should be closely examined for nail holes, and the lance wound. Every one should be checked for signs that this God is capable of and generous enough to assume such suffering on behalf of a creation he would reconcile and make whole. Only then do we know this IS the God proclaimed in the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, the only one worthy of being followed even into the darkest reaches of human sin and death, the only One who meets us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place, the only one who loves us with an eternal love from which nothing can separate us.

Esteeming Petitionary Prayer as True Prayer of Praise!

I recently read a blog piece referring to the prayer of praise as a higher form of prayer than the prayer of petition. I have to say that first of all I don't much care for establishing some forms of prayer as "higher" than others. I know the whole practice has a long and regarded history in the area of spirituality but despite the fact that I can understand some of this ranking business, I just can't accept it as I once might have. But we are just finishing a Bible Study class on the Lord's Prayer (part of the series on the Sermon on the Mount) and the very first thing commentators ordinarily point out is that this prayer, this model and paradigm of what Jesus knew as prayer and desired to teach us is that it is ALL petitions. With the exception of the invocation itself (Abba, Pater! or Our Father, Who art in heaven) every line of Jesus' Prayer is composed of petitions --- and even then, I think we must hear the invocation as also implicitly petitionary! To call upon God by Name is to (responsively) give God a place to stand in space and time, specifically in our own lives and this, after all, is what God has desired of us --- that we become God's counterparts in God's own enterprise of Love; we therefore ask God to be sovereign (to hallow --- something only God can do --- his own name) in our lives!

Each line of the prayer is meant to assist us in opening our hearts, minds, and lives to the powerful presence of God who wills to work in and through each of us. So, if this is the case, and this Lord's Prayer is a model or paradigm of the very essence of prayer, the model or paradigm which represents "the mind of Christ" and the way we "put on the mind of Christ" then can we really argue there are "higher forms of prayer than petition"? To put it another way, isn't opening ourselves to another in love and trust the greatest praise one can offer another? And isn't petition, especially as Jesus articulates and orders these in any of the three or four versions we have, an invitation to genuine praise, namely, by putting God's needs first, and our needs/desires second? We are not, in other words, to being people who merely say, "Lord, Lord" (or "Praise God!"), but to BE (the) people who, petition by petition, give our whole selves over to God as the field from which God will bring forth the hidden treasure of God's Kingdom! In this way we are allowed to participate in God establishing God's very life on earth as it is in heaven. We are called, by every petition to open ourselves to the unremitting hallowing of God, to become, that is, living instances of Divine Praise!

One of the theologians who most influenced me when I was a young theologian myself was Gerhard Ebeling. Ebeling wrote a lot about theological linguistics and about human beings as Word Events. Each of us is called to become language events. An event differs from a mere occurrence  in terms of meaning; an Event is something filled with meaning where a mere occurrence is relatively empty of significance. Like Jesus (though only in and through Jesus!!) we are to become incarnate Word of God --- meaningful Word Events created by and for God's Word, especially in the form of Proclamation. Most often I think of all of this in terms of becoming an articulate expression of the Gospel of God or becoming God's own prayer in our world. (Some theologians speak of Jesus as the Parable of God --- an identity that grounds and thus characterizes all he is and does, especially in preaching and teaching.) In light of what I have said about becoming a Word or Language Event, perhaps it would not be far off to suggest that we are to become articulate songs or hymns of Praise. As we pray the petitions of the Lord's Prayer, we open ourselves to the Presence, sovereignty, and will of God, don't we thus praise God in truth as well as in our words and become ourselves "Words of Divine Praise"? Could there possibly be a "higher" form of prayer?

I say this as a contemplative whose primary form of prayer is quiet prayer, but for whom other forms of prayer are meant to be equally contemplative, equally the work of the Spirit of Stillness or hesychasm. What I recognize is the dynamics of petitionary prayer and quiet prayer, for instance, are essentially the same: in each form of prayer we pose the question of (i.e., which is) our own incomplete lives and open ourselves to God's dynamic presence so that God might act within us, to touch, heal, strengthen, sanctify and complete us. Prayer is always God's own work in us. Isn't it time to let go of the notion of higher and lower forms of prayer?

Solemnity of the Sacred Heart (Reprise)

Today we celebrate a feast that may seem at first glance to be irrelevant to contemporary life. The Feast of the Sacred Heart developed in part as a response to pre-destinationist theologies which diminished the universality of the gratuitous love of God and consigned many to perdition. But the Church's own theology of grace and freedom point directly to the reality of the human heart -- that center of the human person where God freely speaks himself and human beings respond in ways which are salvific for them and for the rest of the world. It asks us to see all  persons as constituted in this way and called to life in and of God. Today's Feast of the Sacred Heart, then, despite the shift in context, asks us to reflect again on the nature of the human heart, to the greatest danger to spiritual or authentically human life the Scriptures identify, and too, on what a contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart might mean for us.

As I have written here before, the heart is the symbol of the center of the human person. It is a theological term which points first of all to God and to God's activity deep within us. It is not so much that we have a heart and then God comes to dwell there; it is that where [and to the extent] God dwells within us and bears witness to himself, we have a heart. The human heart (not the cardiac muscle but the center of our personhood the Scriptures call heart) is a dialogical event where God speaks, calls, breathes, and sings us into existence and where, in one way and degree or another, we respond to become the people we are [and are called to  be]. It is therefore important that our hearts be open and flexible, that they be obedient to the Voice and love of God, and so that they be responsive in all the ways they are summoned to be.

Bearing this in mind it is no surprise that the Scriptures speak in many places about the very worst thing which could befall a human being and her spiritual life. We hear it in the following line from Ezekiel: [[If today you hear [God's] voice, harden not your hearts.]] Many things contribute to such a reaction. We know that love is risky and that it always hurts. Sometimes this hurt is akin to the mystical experience of being pierced by God's love and is a wonderful but difficult experience. Sometimes it is the pain of compassion or empathy or grief. These are often bittersweet experiences, but they are also life giving. Other times love wounds us in less fruitful ways: we are betrayed by friends or family, we reach out to another in love and are rejected, a billion smaller losses wound us in ways from which we cannot seem to recover.

In such cases our hearts are not only wounded but become scarred, indurated, less sensitive to pain (or pleasure), stiff and relatively inflexible. They, quite literally, become "hardened" and we may be fearful and unwilling or even unable to risk further injury. When the Scriptures speak of the "hardening" of our hearts they use the very words medicine uses to speak of the result of serious and prolonged wounding: induration, sclerosis, callousedness. Such hardening is self-protective but it also locks us into a world which makes us less capable of responding to love with all of its demands and riskiness. It makes us incapable of suffering well (patiently, fruitfully), or of real selflessness, generosity, or compassion.

It is here that the symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus' is instructive and where contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart can assist us. The Sacred Heart is clearly the place where human and divine are united in a unique way. While we are not called to Daughterhood or to Sonship in the exact same sense of Jesus' (he is only "begotten" Son, we are adopted Sons --- and I use only Sons here because of the prophetic, countercultural sense that term had for women in the early Church along with its derivative nature --- whether male or female we are sharers in Jesus' own Sonship --- we are meant to be expressions of a similar unity and heritage; we are meant to have God as the well spring of life and love at the center of our existence.

Like the Sacred Heart our own hearts are meant to be "externalized" in a sense and (made) transparent to others. They are meant to be wounded by love and deeply touched by the pain of others but not scarred or indurated in that woundedness; they are meant to be compassionate hearts on fire with love and poured out for others --- hearts which are marked by the cross in all of its kenotic (self-emptying) dimensions and therefore too by the joy of ever-new life. The truly human heart is a reparative heart which heals the woundedness of others and empowers them to love as well. Such hearts are hearts which love as God loves, and therefore which do justice. I think that allowing our own hearts to be remade in this way represents an authentic devotion to Jesus' Sacred Heart. There is nothing lacking in relevance or contemporaneity in that!

Followup on Suffering Well: Suffering and the Will of God

[Dear Sister Laurel, I wanted to thank you for the article you wrote on suffering well. I am surprised by part of it. You say that you do not believe that God wills you to be ill and I guess that means you don't believe that God wills you to suffer, but don't we pray to accept our suffering when we pray "Thy will be done" in the Lord's prayer? Wasn't Jesus praying to accept his suffering when he prayed this in Gethsemane? Do you really not believe that we are praying to accept our suffering when we pray this way? Aren't we to embrace sufferings as the cross of Christ?]]

Thanks for your comment and questions. I think you have put your finger on a really neuralgic place in the Lord's Prayer, Gethsemane, and our own approach to God's will. (And no pun intended with the term "neuralgic".) It is very common to think of the will of God somehow being related to suffering. We get a difficult diagnosis and say, "Well, it must be the will of God!" Or, some terrible tragedy happens and we (unfortunately often carelessly and blithely) say, "We must accept the will of God!" --- as though God wills the tragedy. Isn't it "funny" (peculiar, strange, uncritical, unreasonable, etc.) the way we 1) associate the will of God with suffering, and 2) assume we know what the will of God is in these and similar cases? In fact, when the Lord's Prayer speaks of the will of God being done on earth as it is in heaven, it is talking about something very much different than suffering. It is the coming of the Kingdom of God, the realm of justice, peace, meaning, hope, and authentic humanity here on earth that is the will of God in the Lord's Prayer. The petition for the will of God is the third "Thou" petition, that is, third petition that refers to God's being God for us. All three  "Thou" petitions refer to God as verb, God as actor and initiator, God as the One who brings creation into being and to fulfillment of being. All three petitions are ways of opening ourselves to dimensions of what it means to allow God to be God.

I believe something very similar is happening as Jesus says, "Not my will, but Thy will be done", when he is struggling in Gethsemane. Jesus struggled with temptation to use his identity as Son of God to do works of power when he was driven in to the desert by the Holy Spirit after his baptism. He very definitively chose the way of weakness even though the temptations he experienced would have involved the use of his power for good things in and of themselves. (There is nothing wrong with getting food when one is starving or to accept leadership of kingdoms when one would be a wonderful leader, etc.) I think this was a choice he made many times during his public ministry. Now, at the end of the story Jesus must choose again in a final and exhaustive way; he must commit himself to a way of seeing God's purposes and plans that depend on Jesus' own weakness, his own helplessness, and his total dependence on God to bring meaning out of the senselessness people will commit against him and the mission of God, not only unto death "but (unto) death on a cross". I think of this choice as both qualitatively the same and distinct in terms of intensity and difficulty as the decisions Jesus has made right along through his public ministry. He continues to choose "left-handed power" (God's power being perfected in weakness). But now he will have to journey to that far place the NT calls sinful or godless death without any precedent for understanding this in terms of either Judaism or the Greco-Roman world. He will have to trust and depend entirely on God even when he cannot feel God's presence (in fact, when he feels God's absence and abandonment by God).

I think this is what Jesus is saying yes to; this is the will of God he is committing to, despite not being able to see it, imagine it,  understand it, etc.  But I also think if we were to ask Jesus if his Abba willed his suffering, he would look at us as if we had gone off the rails completely, and I think he would exclaim, "Of course not! How could you suggest that?? That's not the One I have been revealing (making real) to you all this time!!" And yet, God wills to enter into sinful death and transform it with his presence. He  wills that Jesus choose the way of weakness. He knows what we human beings will do to Jesus. What we will do (and, it often seems, what we almost inevitably do to holiness or true humanity when confronted with these) is NOT the will of God. That is something the Cross shows us without doubt. The cruelty, treachery, cowardice, duplicity, betrayal, human abandonment, etc hardly argue this (trial and crucifixion) is the will of God. But a God who reveals himself in weakness, a God whose grace is sufficient for us, a God who can and will bring meaning out of absurdity, wholeness out of brokenness, righteousness out of sin, and fulfillment out of emptiness --- these things ARE the will of God. Our God reveals himself as the One from whose love nothing whatsoever can separate us; this is the lesson of the Cross. Not that God wills suffering, but that God wills an end to anything that can cause suffering due to separation or alienation from God.

Your question about Jesus accepting his suffering is a different question though than the question of whether or not God wills Jesus' suffering.  It is one thing to determine suffering is somehow inevitable and something else to believe God wills that suffering. It is one thing to consent to journey wherever one's life takes one and to commit to doing so with God; it is another to assert that every step, no matter how skewed or painful was actually willed by God. God can certainly use Jesus' suffering; God can and does bring an almost infinite good out of it (this, after all, is part of the Good News we Christians proclaim); but this does not mean God wills the suffering per se, nor the degradation, torture, and inhumanity human beings take on in their reaction to Jesus!! Surely we cannot say the religious and civil leadership and crowds in Jesus' passion were cooperating with the will of God!!! But Paul faced the same paradox. He wrote, "Where sin abounded grace abounded all the more. What should we say, sin more so that grace may abound even more? God forbid!!!" Our God does not will our suffering any more than he does Jesus' --- but at the same time we should be consoled that where suffering abounds grace will abound all the more!!! Nothing can separate us from the Love of God.

Thus, my answer to your final question re accepting our own sufferings as a share in the Cross of Christ lies in line with all of this. Do what we can to remain open to the God whose power is revealed in weakness. Do not believe that God wills one's suffering per se, at least not when we are speaking of things like illness, tragedy, sinfulness, and death, but believe they will never have the final word or the last silence. Do what Jesus did when he accepted his own cross (the weight of his own authentic humanity), namely accept a humanity that makes God known (or at least CAN make God known) even in those realities which seem antithetical to Divinity and Holiness. Trust this. We do what we can reasonably do medically, etc to relieve suffering, but when there really is nothing that can be done, we trust that our God will be there for us in this way; God has revealed in the cross of Christ that he will be present with and for us in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. This is the Good News we must cling to in the midst of any suffering.

Oakland Civic Orchestra Mendelssohn Symphony 5, mvts 2, 3 and 4

One of my favorite movements of any Symphony!!




I love the fugue in the third movement, but I also love the Lutheran hymns, etc, throughout. After all there's a reason it is called "Reformation"! Remember these are all amateur players with day jobs. Marty (conductor) teaches High School Music and through her work with us over the last @twenty-three years we have grown into a fairly competent orchestra!! What is very cool is how much each player loves what they are doing. The ability to make music is truly a grace of God.

Question On Suffering Well

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I am trying to learn what it means to suffer well. I just was diagnosed with a neurological disorder and my pastor said something about learning to suffer well. I have read several of your articles on suffering and on chronic illness as vocation. I found where you wrote: [[As in Christ's life, of itself suffering is not redemptive; it is our dependence upon God, our remaining open to God's grace (God's living self) in spite of and within that suffering that is redemptive, for it implicates God into the places or realms from which he would otherwise be excluded. (Realms like sin and death are also personal realms, and God cannot simply force his way into them, or overcome them by fiat; they imply human decisions to live --- and therefore to die --- without God, and thus they come to be embodied realities which are deeply personal. ]] Could you say more about what you think it means to suffer well? You don't talk much about your own suffering. I am wondering, do you think you know how to suffer well? I think doing that must be different than I think it is because I am getting nowhere except maybe more depressed.]]

It's a great series of questions! I am genuinely sorry for your diagnosis. Please be assured of my ongoing prayers. As you may know, I have lived my entire adult life with a medically and surgically intractable seizure disorder and a form of complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS formerly called RSD) all coupled with PTSS. Through the years I have been to the OR about 14 times and have been on any number of med trials, stellate ganglion blocks, electrical nerve stimulation, depth electrodes, opioids, and innumerable lab trips and doctors' appointments, tests, treatments, therapy, etc., to control either seizures or chronic pain or deal with the psychological ramifications of these. (Never mind the broken wrist, severed ulnar tendon, frozen shoulders, etc!) Some of these were helpful and I am grateful to God for them and especially for several of my doctors, but more important than all of these in learning to "suffer well" (I dislike this term and will say why in just a moment) has been my work in spiritual direction and personal formation. By the way, listing all these things makes me feel a little like I am doing an insane thing, and speaking in a crazy way like Paul does in Friday's first reading from 2 Cor 1:18, 21-30. But Paul does it to focus on his own weakness as the counterpart of the Grace and power of God in his life and I truly would like to do the same! Except to suggest that perhaps I can empathize some with your situation, there is no real reason otherwise to make such a list!

It is important that seizures and pain be controlled as well as possible, of course. I and anyone with disabling conditions need to function as best we can. Getting appropriate medical care is simply necessary --- morally as well as medically. These days I have found a fair combination of meds and other treatments that help with control, especially with pain, but both conditions are still uncontrolled. The real key, however, to living with these (or any!!) kinds of debilitating conditions is not to learn precisely to "suffer well" where the focus is on our suffering, but instead, to learn to live well with and within one's limitations. The focus must be on living. We are each of us so much more than our medical conditions and that is especially true when we view reality from the perspective of the grace and presence of God! Moreover, I am personally convinced that so long as our focus is on our suffering and not on our living with and in Christ, so long as our work in spiritual direction (or inner growth work) and prayer is not geared toward becoming and being essentially well, whole and/or holy in spite of our medical conditions, we make no real progress. Neither will we be able to witness effectively to others if our suffering is more than a momentary focus here or there!

Now let me be clear. I don't mean to say that we are not to speak directly of our suffering with our directors or close friends, pastor, etc. We will and must do that, of course, and we will also struggle to pray and do our own inner work in spite of the suffering that accompanies it (as it will in any deep healing or inner work --- for yes, of course all that will be involved). We cannot simply stuff our feelings or deny our pain; to do so is to deny our humanity and close ourselves off to the grace of God which can come in the midst of suffering. Still, the focus of one's life and of one's work --- especially in spiritual direction --- will be on learning to live well, coming to an essential wholeness in spite of our medical conditions. This is the very nature of any vocation. Some kinds of personal work will occasion intense suffering of itself, but this is always done so that one may live fully the abundant life God wills for and offers each of us. In Friday's lection, Paul lists all the tribulations he has dealt with, all the weaknesses he has experienced and had revealed to others through the persecutions he endured, but he does so only in order to witness to life-in-spite-of his weakness and a God whose power is perfected in weakness (both God's own kenosis and our own weakness). In this way Paul never sounds like a victim; instead he is someone whose weaknesses serve to glorify God.

To What Will we Witness?

I never feel called to witness to suffering per se. Suffering is associated with sin, the state of brokenness and estrangement, alienation and self- centeredness. It stems from our separation from the God of life and wholeness --- to whatever extent that is true for God's creation in general. (I am not speaking here of personal sin, by the way; please be very clear about that when you read me here! I am referring here to an existential state we are born into, not something we cause with our own personal sin.) What I do feel called to witness to, therefore, is the life God gives me, the hope and sense of futurity that is the result of God's grace, God's presence and "time" in my time.  When I talk this way I am talking about the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God, the inbreaking of God's time, of eternity into space and time. When this happens time takes on a new character. We find it is measured in terms of hope and also of love. One of the real problems of pain and suffering is that they make of time an endless succession of empty,  meaningless, or hopeless moments with no end and no real future in sight. When God breaks into our world of space and time our perspective shifts and time --- because of love --- is transformed and, in fact, is measured by the presence of hope.

This is what I want to witness to when I am suffering, not the pain per se. This, I think is what I am called to find and witness to when I am suffering (just as usually it is what Paul witnesses to in spite of all he has suffered for the sake of the Gospel). Not all suffering is meaningful of course, but despite the senseless suffering we may experience, the real question posed is can one find the meaning in one's life and live for and from that? Hope is a function of meaningfulness (or perhaps it is vice versa!). For those of us who are people of faith (people who trust in God), we believe (we come more and more to know)  that we are loved with an everlasting love; we know that we are important to God, that our lives are meaningful in light of God's life and that we are called upon to witness to this. Whether we suffer or are feeling joy we witness to the life that is ours in spite of our own limits and pain. After all, suffering, though real and sometimes truly awful, is not the whole of our world even when it feels like it is. We must find a way to regain the perspective we have in and through Christ before our view is filled with pain --- the eschatological or Kingdom perspective we had before pain threatened to rob our lives of meaning and hope.

Maintaining a Human Perspective:

One of the quotes I have used here before is by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I think it is very helpful in maintaining the kind of perspective needed to deal creatively or fruitfully with suffering. Bonhoeffer said, [[Not everything that happens is the will of God, but inevitably, of all that does happen, nothing happens outside the will of God,]] In other words, God does not will illness or pain; he certainly does not will lives of disability and torment; however, when these things happen we will find they can be touched and transformed by the grace of God. Paul speaks of God bringing good out of all things for those who love God, and this is the same idea. We cannot blame God for our suffering. I don't for a minute believe God wills my illness or disability, but I have seen time and again that God will bring amazing fruit out of my suffering. It doesn't stop the seizures or the pain, but in the midst of all of that I have hope and my life is meaningful. Sometimes, because of my own resulting vulnerability, God is able to speak to me in new and more profound ways; when days are filled with pain I must remember this larger, more truly human perspective. So, while I don't believe God wills my suffering, I believe profoundly that he wills that I come through the suffering more whole and holy and with a greater sense of being loved than I had before I entered into it.

Again, I believe that suffering well means living well, living from and for the love  of God in a way which witnesses to hope and meaning. There's nothing easy in learning to live this way, but I am convinced it is the only way to deal with suffering effectively. Cultivating the Theological virtues (Faith, Hope, Charity or Love)  in a life characterized by suffering is critical! We have to remember that when we ourselves are mainly or even only screams of anguish,  God wills that we become instead, articulate language events which speak convincingly of God's faithfulness, love, and presence. This is what every human being is called to be, an incarnation of God's Word and Wisdom, God's love and life in Christ. If we can only be a scream of anguish, if our pain is our only discussion topic, the only thing we can talk about or focus on, we have lost perspective and need to recover it. Friends, family, therapists, spiritual directors and others can assist with this. For those with serious illnesses and disability, such persons are indispensable in helping us to maintain a truly human (and Divine) perspective --- that is, a Kingdom perspective where time is measured by hope and life by the meaning God's love gives us.

By the way, Paul only listed his litany of beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonments, etc., once in all of his writing. No one ever forgets it but in the main his writing is about the Grace of God and readers have no sense at all of Paul's life being a scream of anguish. Instead he is an incarnation of the Gospel --- a powerful proclamation of the power of God perfected in weakness (2 Cor 12:9). Those who suffer should aim at being the same!

I hope this is helpful. Please feel free to write again whenever you need.